I wanted to call my new column "Look at These Dork-Ass Nerds" but apparently the title "lacked any semblance of journalistic dignity." Anyway I wrote about Palantir

That's more than they ever managed to do about his links to sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska

This story is not just a story of ICE. It's a story of a bad Samaritan. A brutal police force who just respond with violence to any uncertainty. Then ICE and its callous disregard for human welfare and rights. It's a story of a rotten society. www.investigativepost.org/2026/02/25/b...

“So many of the names in the files are subjects of longstanding interest: Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon, Elon Musk, Oleg Deripaska, even Peter Mandelson. It’s a gold mine of new evidence and connections and revelation after revelation.” www.thenerve.news/p/carole-cad...

This stuff from 🇩🇪/🇪🇺, & 🇺🇸 failing Ukraine in 2025 on military aid, is shameful & embarrassing & it didn't need to happen.

Yours Eternally documentary: Ilya Mikhaylus, #Ukraininan cinematographer, filmmaker and member of Khartiya corps has made a short film inspired by the Yours Eternally song. The film was shot during the winter of 2025.

A man of the people.

Quality education is a personnel-intensive, time-intensive, low tech project. It involves hours in the classroom, hours reading, hours meeting with students, hours writing or working in the lab. Time- & personnel-intensive, non-sexy stuff. It's been that way for centuries & will remain so.

About $1.7 billion flowed from two accounts at Binance, whose founder was pardoned by Trump, to Iranian entities with links to terrorist groups, a possible violation of global sanctions, investigators discovered. David Yaffe-Bellany @pekingmikenyt.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/t...

Pharma companies submit new drugs for extensive testing before they are used by humans. Aviation regulators will ground an entire fleet of aircraft until a problem is fixed. Yet this multi hundred-billion dollar industry is just letting employees fiddle around until something goes seriously wrong.

Zelensky said the Lviv attack was a terrorist act organized by Russia. Two explosions took place, with the second detonating after emergency services arrived. Twenty five people were injured and a 23 year old policewoman was killed. He said the perpetrators were recruited through Telegram. #Ukraine

"Funny how Nigel Farage made very little mention of this brand new appointment last week. James Orr is the new "Head of Policy" for Reform UK, responsible for planning how Reform will take over the government of the country. What could possibly go wrong?"

techcrunch.com/2026/02/21/s... Sam Altman would like you to know that AI is going to use only the energy of the workers it displaces once we starve those workers to death so we can use their energy to fuel AI or something to that effect.

Wait what theconversation.com/the-worlds-2...

We are the laughingstock of the world because of our moronic and psychotic president. Deservedly so.

Alistair Campbell - podcaster, whose handwringing isn’t enough to erase his role in the WMD narrative. Nick Clegg - enabled the morally repugnant ‘austerity’ initiatives of the Cameron coalition, then covered for the anti-democratic ethical sinkhole Meta, as head of PR, …8/

This would be quite an escalation by Orbán - as he promised at the European Council in December to exactly not veto this, as long as Hungary was not part of the Enhanced Cooperation. This would make it a huge breach of trust (if there is any left).

Some really important and impressive words from Kompany on racism in European football, it's history and a perspective on how powerless black players can be when they face racism. Also calling out Mourinho who is enabling and justifying racist abuse.

NEW How Palantir captured the Ministry of Defence How a close read of public domain documents show how MoD was commercially colonised by Palantir By me, at FT www.ft.com/content/5207...

Solar and batteries are cheap enough that most people can get most of their electricity from them, and save money. This equation gets better and better over time as their costs decline. All details in a new blog post: nworbmot.org/blog/solar-b...

I'd forgotten how vociferous Boris Johnson was in defence of Prince Andrew as the Epstein scandal started to rattle the iron railings of Buckingham Palace. Here he is in 2015 1/2 youtu.be/q8sclKL37JU?...

Mark Zuckerberg and his Ray-Ban entourage have their day in court

Elon Musk is increasingly addicted to white extinction narratives - whose purpose is to radicalise racial threat perceptions, fears of civil war and to legitimise violence. The UK government took AI images seriously - but has still said almost nothing about Musk + racism bsky.app/profile/sund...

"Oh wow, you're in the US State Department? That's amazing! What do you do there?" "I scour the internet for Nazi content to upload on a US government run portal which makes sure Germans can read it without using a VPN." "Would you..?" "Yes, I'd call myself an American hero."

Critics argue that Šuica's participation, which was not communicated to capitals beforehand, lacks the necessary mandate and risks being interpreted as a collective endorsement of the contentious Board of Peace, several diplomats told @euronews.com.

X's algorithm is in fact doing what you think it's doing. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

7/This is the logical conclusion of what @himself.bsky.social and I describe as the enshittification of US power. Platforms proved too good to be true. And now, dependence is unleashing a political response. www.wired.com/story/enshit...

In 2021, I reported on an internal meeting at Facebook about discussions to put facial recognition on new smartglasses. One of their execs complained about the coverage and said the co would have a "very public discussion" about the tech. They never did. And now: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

Commodities & crypto creamed

ALSO - if you missed out on your childhood measles vaccine and haven't had measles, you can get *free* MMR vaccination from your GP! (whether as an older child, teenager or adult). I got my MMR about 10 years ago! www.nhs.uk/vaccinations...

This is an insane story start to finish. $65k a year "AI school" heavily surveils students, generates nonsensical questions that "does more harm than good," scrapes from competitors. Stores hours of video of children insecurely. Lots more: www.404media.co/students-are...

Not a single strategic goal has been met. Russia's losing a Vietnam's worth of soldiers every few months. The economy is sprinting toward stagnation, while Moscow is turning more and more every month into a Chinese vassal—all while the Kremlin's allies topple elsewhere. Staggering historic failure.

Excellent summary of how terrible Tesla's sales are in Europe over the last few years. It warms the heart to read how Tesla is Toast in Europe. #TeslaTakedown cleantechnica.com/2026/02/15/t...

As a direct result of the obscene actions of Russell Vought and Elon Musk in destroying USAID, we can expect “at least 9.4 million additional deaths by 2030, if the current funding trend continues. About 2.5 million of those deaths are projected to be children under the age of 5.”

Reddit, Meta, and Google Voluntarily Gave DHS Info of Anti-ICE Users, Report Says https://gizmodo.com/reddit-meta-and-google-voluntarily-gave-dhs-info-of-anti-ice-users-report-says-2000722279

Two other stories. First, Rubio gives a speech on the importance of European security to the USA, and does not mention Russia, Ukraine or the greatest war in Europe since 1945 once in the text. Excuse me if I remain a pessimist. Plus a Ukrainian article worth reading.

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes! "Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

Perhaps even more impressive: the head chef at the British Antarctic Survey gets one delivery a year to one of his sites. I am in awe of the project management involved in both this and the cruise ship above www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Bannon, Epshteyn hit with investor class action over ‘Patriot Pay’ cryptocurrency reut.rs/46K6Ul1

DHS is being more aggressive than ever targeting anonymous social media accounts that have spoken out against ICE, asking Big Tech to hand over information on users without signed judicial warrants story w/ @sheeraf.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

US Sec of State Rubio skips Ukraine meeting with European leaders in Munich. He canceled attendance at last minute in move that EU official calls ‘insane’ www.ft.com/content/fdd6...

You[Europe]need to prepare yourselves before war comes to you.In this,we Ukrainians are your best partners,because we already live in the future of war- Oleksandr Falshtynskyi,Chief of Medical Service of the 7th Rapid Response Corps of the🇺🇦 Air Assault Forces,at the Munich Security Conference:

The use of cryptocurrency in sales of human beings for prostitution and scam compounds nearly doubled in 2025, according to a conservative estimate. Many of the deals are happening in plain sight. www.wired.com/story/crypto...

Gallup will no longer measure presidential approval after 88 years thehill.com/homenews/med...

"Switzerland’s military has terminated its contract with Palantir… following a security audit… concluded that U.S. intelligence agencies could potentially access sensitive Swiss defense data… significant reputational warning for the data analytics firm" www.newscase.com/palantirs-sw... #R4Today

So glad to see George Cottrell being named in parliament yesterday. He was Farage’s head of fundraising when he convicted of an offence related to money laundering & is still close to & funding Farage. Crypto is an urgent democratic threat to the UK

This is the way forward. Palantir is a hostile agent.

"Although the judge noted numerous irregularities on Ice’s court documents, she ultimately sided with the agency." Irish man has a work permit, US business, American wife, almost finished Green card application, and has paid a bond to be released. ICE, implausibly, claims he agreed to be deported.